America seems unable to decide how to educate its children. We swing between reforms unsure of what we need more of and which direction to go. There are ongoing debates about how to shrink the education gaps between the well offand the under resourced. Successes occur, but they seem to struggle for acknowledgment and replication.

Arne Duncan served as President Obama’s Secretary of Education. His assessment of the nation’s efforts to educate children and of his own tenure in federal office is “How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education.”

Retablos are devotional paintings, usually done on tin. The tightly framed images tell stories of trauma, temptation and redemption.

Octavio Solis is an award winning working playwright immersed in the culture and politics of our time. His plays tell the stories of rural America, of Latino America, of border America. His community of artists are telling stories that reveal the changing culture of the nation and the continuing connections people still have across different borders, nations, age, race, culture and politics.

The interview came out of an assignment for Seattle Magazine. I wrote a story for the December 2018 issue focused on Wong’s work and the future of the ID.

TheChinatown/International Districtonce housed thousands of working people in hundreds of small rooms in residential hotels. These single room occupancy or SRO hotels were viable and affordable housing options for almost 100 years. But starting the 1970’s new ordinances forced the shuttering of many of these hotels. If you look up from your wandering in the International District today, you will see many of the windows in the uppers floors boarded up.

With the booming Seattle economy, these buildings are now being rehabbed, but the rents are usually market rate, unless the developer is a non-profit. So going forward, the working poor, in dire need of affordable housing, won’t find many options in a neighborhood they once dominated.

Marie Wong, Seattle University associate professorin theInstitute of Public Service and the Asian Studies Program and Public Affairs, studies Pan-Asian districts across America. She is worried about the future of Seattle’s International District. She has documented the history of these SRO’sin the district in her new book, “Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels.”

We toured the district to get a feel for its past, present and future.

It’s a nice long walk and wander. I’ve broken it into two episodes, both around an hour each.

Too long?

If you want to jump around, here is an annotated list of listening spots to land on along the way.

00:00 Meeting on the street, talking about writing, journalism and the noisy streets.

9:32 We started our tour at the 100 year plus Kong Yick Buildings, flagship buildings of the final, historic Chinatown District.

9:52 The first core of Chinatown was at First and Yesler and why it moved into its current location.

13:00 Developing a Chinatown that won’t move and becomes the conscious execution of Chinese America communities are constructed in Seattle.

14:00 The building of the first SRO’s by the Chinese Free Masons.

15:48 The recessed balconies reveal that Chinese associations built and occupied the buildings. The traces of histories in the buildings.

17:36 The histories of the East and West Kong Yick Buildings and Corporation.

20:26 Can the small businesses housed in Kong Yick as well as other former SRO’s survive?

24:21 The Ozark Hotel Ordinances and how they changed Seattle housing.

27:16 In the 2000’s a renovation for these buildings began- most at market rate

29:00 Restoring these buildings costs between 24-26 million. Developers either partner with community non-profits or charge market rates.

30:20 What was a typical SRO building and room. 350 different SRO’s in downtown Seattle area.

31:43 Japantown

33:15 John Okada, author of “No-No-Boy grew up in Japantown.”

33:42 Wong feels blessed to have met so many people who grew up in the district.

34:35 The district is changing as city’s 1970’s and 2014 housing ordinances reclassify buildings forcing more closures and changing the district with even more impact than even the WW2 incarcerations.

39:06 SRO’s seen by elites as substandard historically and still today even as they are seen as good housing options in some cities. But Wong feels the city council has regulated the city out of affordable options. The money spent and taxes assessed have to filter back into the community.

45:02 Residential Hotel buildings were zero lot lines. Look up to differentiate one building, and its history, from the next. Compare the New Pacific and the Panama hotel.

46:00 We gaze at boarded up buildings. Is the district losing its identity?

47:30 The district entices developer who see the opportunity for higher rents next to the booming downtown core.

50:00 Imagine the district in the 1900’s. It was a boom time for construction of unique SRO’s, like the Milwaukee Hotel, redeveloped by James Koh. Now SRO’s style is persona non grata in many neighborhoods.

53:50 Pigeons!

55:00 There are light-wells inside most of these half block sized buildings.

56:00 The businesses in the Milwaukee Hotel are emblematic of the new ID.

57:28 Bob Santos, hero of the district.

59:00 Will older Asian-American districts disappear? Will new districts arise?

A conversation with Peter Sagal, a marathon runner, Runner’s World columnist and author of The Incomplete Book of Running. His day job, host of the Peabody award winning NPR news quiz, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!"

Harvard Geneticist David Reich explains the latest discoveries on human evolution. New technology allows scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA from ancient bones. Reich explores how the genome contains the history of our species and our relationship to ancient humans.

It might be time to rethink our notion of the evolutionary tree of life. Turns out that life on earth isn't simply the development of simple to more complex organisms. It is that, but it is something else too.

Humans are related to viruses and bacteria as well as chimps and other sapiens. All along the path of evolution, DNA from one species is able to move over to another.

Horizontal gene transfer might sound like something done in a laboratory, like putting a squid gene in a rabbit so it might glow. Weird as that sounds, it has been done. But It turns out it is more normal than was once understood. Sharing DNA between species has been a part of evolution since life began.

James and Deborah Fallows spent the last five years piloting their small plane across America. They visited small cities where citizens are working together to build communities where opportunity and connection matter. Their book, “Our Towns: A 10,000 Mile Journey Into the Heart of America,” can be read as a tonic to our toxic national politics.

Wizards think we can innovate our way past looming environmental problems. Prophets think we have to cut back and tread ever more lightly on the planet. Charles Mann explores these visions of the future by looking at the impacts 10 billion people will have in 2050 on water use, food production, energy development and climate change.

From the 1920’s until television permanently settled into our living rooms in the late 1950’s, radio blasted out comedies, variety shows, adventures and dramas to waiting listeners. Radio launched performers like Jack Benny and Fred Allen into stardom. It offered established stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Stewart and Frank Sinatra an audience during lulls in their film careers. Radio became a second platform for Hollywood screenplays like “The Bishops’ Wife,” a 1947 holiday movie starring David Niven, Cary Grant and Loretta Young that resurfaced with a different cast on the Lux Radio Theater in 1949.

Feliks Banel is a local historian, writer and radio producer. He has been producing a live holiday radio broadcast for the past few years. This year he is again bringing “The Bishop’s Wife,” starring familiar voices from KIRO radio to a Town Hall stage. KIRO’s Dave Ross leads the cast at University Temple Church Friday December 8th, 2017 at 8 pm,

Feliks joined me for a long talk about the future of radio and the qualities of recorded and live performances in the age of the independent podcaster.

At Length features interviews by Steve Scher with artists, authors and scholars visting Town Hall Seattle

Our irrational behavior interferes with our best efforts to curb spending and increase saving. Dan Ariely has come up with some rules of thumb that can help us make better decisions.

Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter is co-written with lawyer and comedian Jeff Kreisler. Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He is the author of research articles and books, including Predictably Irrational, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty.

Ariely’s insights go beyond budgets and spending. Ariely studied philosophy before turning to psychology. His research extends into exploring the reasons people behave in ways that are counter to their own interests and to the maintenance a strong civil society.

At Length is a podcast featuring interview with visiting scholar and authors to Town Hall Seattle.

How far removed is Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, from the Czars of old and the Soviet Premiers of the past century?

What is the source of his grip power in Russia? What happened along the path to democracy envisioned after the end of the Soviet Union? What does the resurgence of this totalitarian state, adept in the use of modern digital tools of political warfare, tell us about status of democracy in the US?

"The Future is History" by journalist Masha Gessen is a journey thru Russia’s recent political changes. The book follows 4 young Russians who were born in 80’s. Their lives mirror the ups and downs most Russians experienced as the country opened ever so briefly and then closed around itself again.

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American writer. She is the author of 9 books including a highly regarded biography of Vladimir Putin. Her work appears regularly in the New York Review of Books, as well as Slate, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship.

Nancy Pearl, the only public librarian featured as an action figure, has written her first novel. “George and Lizzie” is a funny, acerbic look at an always troubled, always promising marriage.

We talked at Bryant Corner Cafe in the Northeast Seattle neighborhood of Ravenna-Bryant. Nancy and I had another podcast for a year or so called That Stack of Books. Nancy is still meeting with a group of readers at the cafe every Tuesday to talk about the books they are reading. You can join them there.